Or, four years can pass excruciatingly slowly, each holiday, each birthday, each season and each new day a painful reminder of indescribable loss, as is the case for those who lost children and loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary School gun massacre that took place four years ago on December 14, 2012. The parents of children killed at Sandy Hook will never get a chance to think how quickly four years have passed. They will never watch their children head off to a first day of high school or college.
Last Sunday evening a group of 200 plus marchers joined the Marin Chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MMDA) for an evening vigil and march to remember the 20 young children and 6 adults killed at Sandy Hook. As dusk fell, the group, made up of a majority of mothers, but including many fathers, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and teachers, gathered in front of Tam High carrying small tea lights to remember those lost and to honor their lives by continuing to strive for improved Gun Safety laws across the country.
President-elect Trump is a strong supporter of the NRA, and the results of the election were big blow to gun sense activists across the country. The national Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense website states, “The NRA spent 30 million dollars to elect Donald Trump and they will expect to get what they paid for. Make no mistake: Moms will not allow the outcome of one election to deter us. It’s up to us to stand between the president-elect and the NRA’s vision of more guns for more people.”
“It is a Sunday evening. It would of course have been easiest to stay home. But then you think about the Sandy Hook children, and the children whose lives will be saved if we improve our gun laws, and you have to do anything and everything you can,” said Leslie Weber of Novato.
And isn’t that exactly what mothers are so good at? Doing anything and everything they can.
More information about Marin Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense can be found on the Facebook page
Kirsten Jones Neff is a journalist who writes about all things North Bay, with special attention to the environment and the region’s farmers, winemakers and food artisans. She also works and teaches in school gardens. Kirsten’s poetry collection, When The House Is Quiet, was nominated for the Northern California Book Award, and three of her poems received a Pushcart nomination. She lives in Novato with her husband and three children and tries to spend as much time as possible on our local mountains, beaches and waterways. For more on her work visit KirstenJonesNeff.Com.